Opinions, enthusiasms, staircase wit.

June 9, 2015

so corinthian only cost taxpayers a couple billion dollars

A month or so ago I was sputtering with rage
because the Corinthian
family of for-profit colleges are naked scams that bilks the
Feds out of billions in guaranteed loans and then runs the business
into the ground like a fucking Jart. Oddly enough, there appears
to be a bit of good news
concerning this, at least with regard
to the students who got suckered into attending one of the
Corinthian Colleges:

In a move against what he called "the ethics of payday lending"
in higher education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
announced Monday that the Education Department would forgive
the federal loans of tens of thousands of students who
attended Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit college company
that closed and filed for bankruptcy last month, amid
widespread charges of fraud.

Mr. Duncan also said the department planned to develop a
process to allow any student -- whether from Corinthian or
elsewhere -- to be forgiven their loans if they had been
defrauded by their colleges.

That's a good one, "the ethics of payday lending" —
credit where credit is due.

So good for the students who were bilked and that will be
repaid. But here's some questions: So sure, the great Corinthian
experiment of for-profit education fell on its face. But before it
did, exactly how much money did the owners, CEOs, management
etc. make? And considering that it's a couple billion dollars
of public money that's going to remedy this, shouldn't maybe the
public try to get some of the money back from the criminals
behind this fraud in the first place?

And second, it's great that the students who were enrolled
at the time of Corinthian's failure are being bailed out from
their student loans. But what about all the other students, the
one who graduated with a useless degree, the ones who never finished
but still have tens of thousands of dollars in loans, before Corinthian
failed? What about them? Shouldn't they be bailed out too?